The invention is directed to an air humidifier with a humidifying device, through which passes a flow of air to be humidified and whose humidifying action can be adjusted by changing the humidification parameters, and with a liquid separator, particularly a water separator, for separating excess drops from the humidified air flow.
The use of air humidifiers in ventilating and air-conditioning installations or the like is known. These air humidifiers are also known as "washers" and operate in a ventilation installation (for example, the ventilating or air-conditioning installation mentioned above) according to the following principle: a flow of air is fed to the air humidifier by means of an air delivery installation (e.g. a ventilator). The air flow is humidified with a liquid, in particular with water, preferably prepared water, in a chamber of the air humidifier. This chamber can be constructed as a nozzle chamber. It has a plurality of atomizing nozzles for atomizing the liquid. This is preferably effected in or opposite to the direction of the flow of air. The water drops forming as a result of the atomization arc entrained by the flow of air and in so doing are completely or partially evaporated. The rate of evaporation depends on the size of the drops and on the relative speed of the water drops and air as well as on other parameters. In order to achieve the highest possible humidifying output (ideally, the air is humidified to 100% relative humidity and, it, possible, oversaturated) with the shortest possible flow path--which corresponds to a short constructional length of the device--considerably more water is atomized into the air than is needed for humidifying. In known installations, roughly ten to one hundred times the amount of water is used. The excess water must be separated from the air flow again so that the air downstream of the washers has 100% relative humidity without containing free drops of water. Residual free, large drops of water would lead to a humidifying of subsequent devices of the ventilation installation, which is undesirable. The spectrum of drops, with respect to the size of the individual drops, depends on the geometric formation of the atomizing nozzle and also on the pressure with which the liquid (in particular water) is atomized. The greater the pressure, the finer (smaller) the drops of the drop spectrum which is produced. This is advantageous for the mass transfer between the liquid and the air to be humidified, but is disadvantageous for the separation of the excess drops which must be carried out subsequently, since small drops are only inadequately separated by the known liquid separators. For this reason, the liquid atomizing devices used in the known devices do not have a drop spectrum in which the size of the drops is too small.
The present invention therefore has the object of providing an air humidifier of the type mentioned above which achieves a higher humidifying efficiency through the use of only a small amount of water.